This encyclopaedic reference guide reveals some
small - oftentimes unimportant - bits of knowledge about all
things Thalion.

Active Sales & Marketing

Of course, nobody of you will ever have heard of
this company. However, this is a marketing organisation that
distributes some smaller labels - like Novagen and that fabulous
little German company called Thalion. Thalion is almost finished
with "Ghost Battle". Though I didn't hear anything
about "Trex Warrior" (a 3D vector graphics
shoot-'em-up), "Amberstar" (a RPG) and
"Tangram", I suppose I can tell you that they will soon
market those as well.

Dragonflight

Epic flagship game of
German software company Thalion, and actually the reason why the
company got founded in the first place, early 1989. The game, not
released until at least a whole year later, was designed and
programmed by two leading members of TEX, and the game deserved
far better sales than, in the end, it got. Featuring beautiful
graphics and animation, it was a RPG set in a distant world where
the dragons used to be an intrinsic part of society but now no
longer were. The quest to be performed was simple: Find the
dragons. But it wasn't as simple as one would think. Although
perhaps not quite in the same league as Lord British'
"Ultima" series, it definitely came close.

"When Stefan and
me visited Thalion, spring 1989, I got commissioned to write the
background novel for this fantastic game. I was honoured beyond
imagination. I've only written two fairly long fantasy fiction
stories, and this was the first. It has an open ending, so I have
this feeling that I might one day finish it, and do some
rewriting as well. The story so far is almost 40 pages (over
15.000 words) long. Miranda always reckoned it was the best story
I've ever written." (Richard)

Enchanted Land

Game programmed by Nic of TCB for Thalion and
finished autumn 1990. It was the first and last Atari game to
feature 50 Hz (1 vertical blank) arcade action on a fully
sync-scrolling screen in all directions. Without a doubt the best
game on the ST ever, technically.

"Two little known facts of this game are
the following. Nic thought of the name of the leading character,
Khurgan. This was inspired by the baddy in 'Highlander'. And I
thought up the name of the game, which was inspired by the song
of the same name by Sodom [Sodom - Persecution Mania - Track #5:
Enchanted Land - (1987)]." (Richard)

Gütersloh

Town about 50 kilometres
east of the German Ruhrgebiet, suffering from a chronic lack of
nightlife. It was the town where Thalion Software was located
and, thus, the place where Richard lived for 18 months from
October 1988 to March 1991.

"The best times I
had there were the Christmas markets. They used to sell great
baked mushrooms then. Gütersloh had no nightlife whatsoever,
which was horrible. We'd go to the cinema regularly, though, but
the films were dubbed in German. Good thing was that they didn't
have breaks in the middle of the film. We spent our evenings
working late, writing, coding, or watching videos. We used to
live in the old Thalion office, where there weren't any showers,
so we just went to the swimming pool really early in the morning
to shower ourselves. We spent our time there wetting old German
women's hair which they tried - and failed - very much to keep
dry." (Richard)

Karsmakers, Richard

(* 03.11.1967) Founder of ST NEWS and main
writer. [...] in October 1989 he started working for Thalion
Software in Germany. There he did translations, novella writing
and game design (he did the level design for "Leavin'
Teramis", the map design and editing for
"Amberstar", and the more complete design for "A
Prehistoric Tale"). In April 1991 he left Thalion [...].

Leavin' Teramis

Game released by Thalion.
It was the first game that Richard did some design for; he
designed the playfields for levels 2 and up. A picture of Jeff Minter can
be found on a higher level, where he shoots off
llamas that try to kill you. And there's a really frantic level
ending around a Napalm Death logo, too. These graphics were done
by Mickey Grohe, one of the lesser famous Thalion contributors.

Prehistoric Tale, A

Game released by Thalion Software, Germany, in
January 1991, and written chiefly by Tim Moss of TLB with
graphics by his brother Dave, during the summer and autumn of
1990. It was designed by Richard, based on the principle of the
Commodore 64 game "Dino Eggs" with lots of new knobs
on, but as deadline and costs pressures mounted, more and more
bits of the game concept had to be scrapped until, in the end,
nothing more than the bare essentials of "Dino Eggs"
remained. This was quite a disappointingly demotivating affair
for Tim and Dave, and Richard wasn't happy with it either. New
Mode of Delta Force and Stefan also contributed bonus screens.

"I had wanted to do a souped-up version
of "Dino Eggs", one of my favourite Commodore 64 games,
for years. I recently found a really old picture file of some
backgrounds I had drawn myself back when I'd just bought a colour
monitor, back in early 1987 or late 1986. To me, the chance came
when I could design and produce a game for Thalion. But "A
Prehistoric Tale" was a a bit of a disappointment for all
involved, even though it scored an average of 75% in all the
computer magazines." (Richard)

Salon de la Micro

A computer show in Paris in autumn 1990 where
Richard had to represent Thalion at the Ubisoft stall (Ubisoft
were the French distributors for Thalion). It was an interesting
experience, which included a prostitute, a bouncer with
ring-filled fists, a visit of the Overlanders and an evening of
cabaret like only the French know how to make. It was chronicled
fully in a pseudo-real-time
article in ST NEWS Volume 5 Issue 2.

"Had I never met Markus
"Bitstopper" Hertfort (or Herfort, or Herzfort, I can't
quite recall) I would never have gotten into contact with The
Exceptions. A lot of things - ST NEWS, Thalion - would have been
quite different." (Richard)

Thalion

Semi-legendary German software company, formed by
members of TEX and various people who had left Rainbow Arts,
unsatisfied with what had been achieved so far. The most
memorable release, no doubt, is "Dragonflight", a
fantastic Role Playing Game programmed by -ME- of TEX with
graphics and design by ES (and music by Mad Max, of course).
Richard worked at Thalion from October 1989 to April 1991. It was
a great company to work for, but eventually he became tired of
the whole thing (mostly the fact that it was a company in Germany
instead of the Netherlands) and left. Some of the remaining
employees took up work for Blue Byte in the old Thalion office
(which also used to be the place where half of the old Thalion
people, including Richard, lived). An early 1989 visit to Thalion
of the entire ST NEWS editorial staff was chronicles in an ST
NEWS real-time article.

"I do remember that time fondly.
Manuela, the Thalion secretary, was just too cute for words. Our
eating habits used to be really bad. We inevitably ate Chinese in
the afternoon, and then went to eat Greek in the evenings.
Watched German-dubbed video all night, showered in the swimming
pool, and devoured huge amounts of pizzas." (Richard)

Ubisoft

I like Ubisoft, probably because of a very pretty
French girl with a gorgeous accent by the name of Marie-Therese
Cordon working there, who insists on kissing when shaking hands
(she caught me quite by surprise there). I knew her already
[before the ECTS 1991], as she was the person responsible for
Thalion marketing when I still worked there.

Wizards, The

English translation of a series of German
articles published in German "ST Magazine" (at the
time the best Atari magazine by far), written by TEX. The
articles covered smooth horizontal scrolling, anti-alias drawing
techniques, opening the lower border and, amazingly, Mad Max'
music routine. They appeared, translated, including all source
code, in ST NEWS
Volume 3 Issue 5 and on, with permission from "ST
Magazine" and TEX.

This text was published in the Atari
ST diskmag "ST News" and is used by kind
permission of Richard Karsmakers. Source for this
article: http://www.st-news.com